


Refract

by pushingcrazies



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Brief mentions of Rose and Steven too, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 13:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16535552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/pseuds/pushingcrazies
Summary: 5,750 years is a long time to think, watch, observe...





	Refract

It should hurt...shouldn’t it?

Can a physical manifestation of light hurt when it is torn so badly it can no longer hold itself together? Lapis knows what pain is, what death is. She has seen it, been horrified by it. Earth animals caught in the middle of Gem battle, torn asunder - red everywhere. Sickening. She wasn’t supposed to be there, she wasn’t -

And then she was gone.

It should hurt, when that Bismuth ripped her apart, but all she felt now (if felt could be the right word) was safety. Peace. She couldn’t hear the battle anymore, could not see the fresh horrors. She can hear sounds, but not well enough to distinguish them. She feels nothing but security. Refresh, regrow.  _ Take your time, be sure that the fighting has stopped before coming back out _ .

She wasn’t even supposed to be there this long. A quick in-and-out job. Perhaps her superior will notice she is missing and come looking for her.

Time passes. The battlefield quiets. Lapis thinks it might be safe to come back out now, and she has prepared a vision of her new self - quite like the old one, actually.

But before she has the chance, she is seized. She feels herself bourne through the air by rough hands. She holds back. If she reforms now, she doesn’t think she can escape. She can’t understand what the gem is saying - only just catches the words “Crystal Gems.” Have they captured her? Will they...shatter her?

After an eternity, her awareness changes. She can hear more acutely, can almost see, although the figures are blurry and indistinct. Has she been forced to regenerate somehow? Homeworld, she knows, has incredible power - power the likes of her has never dreamed of. Spoken in whispers that she ignored because it wasn’t her business. She tries to stretch out her arms but she has no arms to stretch. She tries to blink but there are no eyelids. She tries to scream but she has no voice.

The blurry forms sharpen a little, and she can see cold eyes and a sea of forms bearing diamond insignias. Not stars. Homeworld!

“We have you, rebel,” one of them sneers. “You are our prisoner.”

Prisoner? Rebel?  _ No _ , she tries to tell them. No mouth, no sound.

“Do not try to resist. We will get answers from you one way or another.”

_ I want to tell you but I can’t! Why can’t I speak? _

“Where is your base?”

Dizzy. Distorted. Disoriented, like she’s watching the world from upside down. No, backwards. The world is backwards, it occurs to her out of nowhere. Reflected. Like she’s looking at everything through a mirror.

_ In _ a mirror.

“Where is your leader?”

_ I don’t know! My leader is Blue Diamond! Please, please… _

She thinks as hard as she can of everything that happened since she came to this gem-forsaken planet. She calls up the image of that Bismuth destroying her body, wondering if she can will it hard enough to show on the surface of the mirror she is now sure she is attached to.

“Where is your base?”

_ Please! _

She screws up every ounce of her mental fortitude to show them everything she can think of. The quarry - the battle - the void - this place, surrounded by these Gems -

“ _ What is the meaning of this?” _ The inquisitor fumes. “You rebellious scoundrel, you dare imply  _ we _ are part of your murderous gang?”

What - did she show them something at last? Did she show them themselves?

“My Agate,” a more timid gem speaks up. “That is our reflection.”

“Idiot,” another sneers. “Did you not see the shift? Look.”

The angle changes and Lapis now reflects a different set of Gems. “Ask again,” the sneering voice says.

“Where is your base?”

Lapis scrambles to think of Homeworld, the beautiful gardens there, the glimpses she has seen of the illustrious Diamonds, the warriors she was just looking at -

Gasps. “There, you see! She mocks us by showing us ourselves. The same room, only the angle we were holding her before.”

“What does it mean?”

“How dare she -”

“ - taunt - “

“ - shatter - “

“ - rebel - “

“Wait,” a quiet voice speaks up, new and commanding even at such a low volume. “A mirror can only reflect that which it has seen. Know you anything about the tool you have selected?”

A pause, a shuffle. “Ma’am -”

“Silence. She does not show us the rebel base because she cannot. The mirror holds not the image.”

_ Of course. _

“What are we to do?”

“Show her the tools she needs to answer us. Take her to the rebels and -”

“There is no time,” a new voice interrupts. “We just received orders - evacuation.”

Evacuation? Leave Earth? Astonishing… unheard of for the Diamonds to accept defeat. Why…? Panic rising. What is to become of her?

“Bring the mirror,” the commanding voice says. “We can still get that information, though if the evacuation is any indication, it will be of no use to us anymore.”

The Gems disperse, and Lapis is passed from so many hands that she loses track of who carries her. She watches the Gems scramble for the evacuation, packing up their whole army and preparing to flee. She is shoved into a blackness, indeterminate and terrifying. She only hears the sounds of the escape.

Boom! Thumph - tap. Shuffle, swish. Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud -

Clink! A flash of sky, then ground. Rumble rumble. Thud. Thud.

CRACK.

_ Pain _ .

Agony shoots through her very being, screaming out of nowhere. It’s like fire and ice searing through her soul. It’s like nothing should could ever have imagined. Were she free of the mirror, she would not be able to hold herself together. Ironic, she will think later, how her prison is the only thing holding her together now.

Face down, she sees nothing for a long time. She doesn’t hear another Gem; they have all left, abandoned her. She hears other sounds: the ocean lapping at the Galaxy Warp pad, wildlife, ocean life, wind. A storm skitters her across the pad. A curious seagull pecks at her enamel, manages to flip her over. The pain has not receded at this point, but she is more used to it now. She’s not sure how much time has passed. She saw only darkness for such a long time. She watches the Earth rotate its way through daylight and into night. A new pain seizes her, unrelated to the crack in her gem - she can see Homeworld now. Oh, it was so beautiful. So distant. So cold.

_ Home _ , she thinks desperately, but she cannot conjure up the image.  _ Wings _ . She concentrates with all her might, but nothing emerges.  _ Water _ , she begs. It will not come to her.

Time passes.

Slowly.

Inexorably.

She can mark the passage by planetary rotations, by the stars that appear in the sky, by the storms that shake the warp pad and toss her asunder. After a few decades, she stops counting. She comes up with little ways to save her sanity. She imitates bird noises to see how many seabirds she can attract to the pad. She tries to trick them into warping to parts unknown.

Sometimes a warp pad activates, and a figure just out of Lapis’ circle of perception flits by. A Gem, she is almost certain. But her echos of bird calls do not attract their attention before they disappear again.

She remains forgotten.

Decades slip into centuries. She learns how to shut down her consciousness and sleep. It takes a long time to perfect, but her brain is so idle these days that sleep isn’t that different from wakefulness after all. Sometimes she sleeps for so long the season and stars have changed entirely when she wakes.

Stars blink out of existence. Sometimes new ones are born. But always, there is Homeworld. As long as she can still see it, she never loses hope.

A warp pad activates and voices filter into her perception. The words are indistinct. Lapis reflects a gull’s screech.

The voices pause. “Did you hear that?”

“Rose?”

Lapis freezes as the figures come closer and she is able to make out stars. Not  _ her _ stars, the stars she looks at night after night. Star-shapes integrated into the adornments of two Gems. Rebels.  _ Rose Quartz herself! _

If Lapis could jump into the ocean and swim away, she would. But she is stuck. She can’t even hide herself.

“I thought I heard something. A bird. If it’s all the way out here, it could be lost or hurt.”

“I heard it, but I don’t see any birds here.”

“A trick of the wind?”

“Perhaps.”

The figures move on. Lapis wishes she could cry with relief.

Were the rebels to find her, who knows what they would do to her.

The steady march of time resumes. The rebels come back from time to time, and she never tries to make contact with them again.

She never sees anyone from Homeworld again.

###

Thousands of years pass.

It is an amount of time unimaginable even to a Gem.

Shattering would almost have been kinder.

She fades in and out with the rise of the ocean.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

The Crystal Gems wander through occasionally. She counts four altogether, accounting for their occasional form changes. Rose Quartz. A Pearl. A tiny Amethyst. And a Gem with elements of both a Sapphire and a Ruby, whom the others refer to as Garnet.

Out.

In.

Out.

Blackness is welcoming. It keeps her sane. Small things keep her from losing her mind. Sometimes it’s listening to the Crystal Gems’ conversations about random things. They don’t know they are being overhead, and she would laugh if she could. Because now she knows the answers to all the questions Homeworld demanded of her.

In.

Out.

In.

In.

In.

A time when she can’t blank out. It happens occasionally. A warp pad activates. Lapis ignores it. It’s the Pearl, looking for something.

“I swear,” the Pearl mutters to herself, “if Amethyst  _ lost _ it, I will personally - whaaat?”

Something has caught the Pearl’s eye, and she draws nearer. Lapis is so used to being overlooked that it takes her until the Pearl is actually reaching for her that she realises -

_ She is found _ .

So delirious with confusion and disbelief, she doesn’t know if she is more relieved or terrified. The Pearl holds her in her narrow hands and studies the reflection. Lapis holds back, shows her nothing. A finger traces the cracked Gem on her back, and Lapis can almost  _ feel _ it.

Something resolves in the Pearl’s expression, and Lapis is lifted higher towards her face. A flash of white light and then she is...somewhere. A place that is not a place. A place of energy and transformation and light and...water? She can hear it but cannot see it. Where…?

_ Of course _ , she realises. She is inside the Pearl’s gem.

How….utterly….absurd!

Lapis reflects nothing and everything at the same time. The place is real but unreal, and the objects around her are both invisible kinetic energy and completely formed substances.

Before she can fully process it all, she is taken out again.

She is no longer on the warp pad, but in a high-ceilinged room with...are those waterfalls? She reflects the entirety of the room as the Pearl twists her around and around, examining her from every angle. She mutters to herself, but Lapis can’t catch the words. At last, she comes to rest facing the Pearl once more.

“What is your purpose?” the Pearl asks, and it takes Lapis a moment to realise she is addressing Lapis herself, not more musing.

Could she… after all this time… reveal herself to the rebels? That would make her an outlaw too. But Homeworld already thought she was a rebel….They never came back for her….

And if she plays along now, maybe she can escape later…. Return to Homeworld. Flee this horror planet once and for all.

She concentrates on the images of interrogation from thousands of years ago, still so fresh in her consciousness. Shock registers on the Pearl’s face, and she opens her mouth -

A flying object catapults through the air and lands next to the Pearl. The malformed Amethyst fills Lapis’ view as she crowds her face into the mirror.

“Whatcha got?”

“Amethyst!” The Pearl pushes her away. Lapis blanks her mind quickly to hide the Gems. “Go away.”

“Where did you get that rusty old thing?”

“I...found it,” the Pearl says.

“Where?”

Clenched teeth grit, “None of your business.”

“Hey,” the Amethyst cries, heedless. “That mirror’s gotta gem on the back.”

The scenery shifts rapidly as the Pearl shoves Lapis behind her back. “Go away, Amethyst, or I will -”

“What, call Rose in here? HEY ROSE!”

“Amethyst, shhhhh,” the Pearl gasps.

The Amethyst laughs. “Don’t worry, P, she’s out with Garnet right now. It’s just you ‘n me. What are you gonna do with that mirror? You can tell me.”

“I’m just trying to figure out how it works right now,” the Pearl admits. She brings Lapis out from behind her back and frowns down at the reflective surface. “It was just about to show me something when you burst in.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. It looked… It looked like some top officials of the Diamond Authority. I don’t know if it was a warning or threat or just a piece of history. It was from the war era.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Oh.” There was a long silence, each of the three Gems lost in her thoughts. The Amethyst spoke up at last. “But why is there a gem on it? It’s cracked. Is it going to shatter?”

“If this mirror is as old as I think it is, I don’t know. It’s held together this long. But it could be on its last leg.” The Pearl traced the edge of the crack again.

“Well… you should show it to Rose and then she can heal it,” the Amethyst chirped. “Then we can figure out what it does and why.”

“No!” the Pearl cried so fiercely Lapis mentally flinched.

“Why not?” Amethyst demanded.

“Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” The Pearl paced her little waterfall, giving Lapis a wide view of her surroundings. “This gem - it’s probably an inactive inorganic. Not all gems are viable, remember? Some are used to power objects to give them extraordinary magic. But if this is a viable gem, she is not one of us. She is a Homeworld gem. If Rose were to heal her and she escapes to Homeworld…” The Pearl lifted her eyes upwards as if she could see Homeworld from there. “We are no match for them. Not anymore.”

“Oh come on, haven’t we kicked butt on everything we meet on this crumby old rock?”

Pearl brought her eyes back down. Sympathy in her expression. “The creatures we fight would be like ants compared to the full wrath of the Diamond Authority’s army. We’re only five Gems. We would be slaughtered.”

“So, what are you going to do with it?” the Amethyst asked. Lapis didn’t like the expressions on either of their faces: pity from the Amethyst, resolve from the Pearl.

“I’m going to keep her safe.”

She slid Lapis back into her gem before Lapis could wonder which of them Pearl meant by ‘her.’

###

“Subdivision: Homeworld Artefacts,” the Pearl inside of the Pearl intones. There is something frivolous and flouncy about her, almost smug. Lapis has had some cursory interactions with a few pearls before, but none had this one’s sauciness. “Mirror. Cross-reference: Gem-comma-cracked. Cross-reference: inactive.”

She is put into place. And there she stays.

The Pearl does not pull up her collection of Homeworld Artefacts often, but that doesn’t stop Lapis from existing and being aware of her surroundings. Even when she is tucked into some neat alcove within the pearl, she is cognizant. She watches. Observes. Reflects. She notes patterns of the items the Pearl puts in and takes out regularly. Who knows when the information might come in handy? She watches the Pearl herself. This place of nonreality is always full of light, and Lapis is never left in the dark. The Pearl controls herself and her actions and emotions well, but she is not above triumphant exaltation or gasps of pain or fear. Lapis wonders what happens to the items stored inside a gem when that gem is shattered. What would happen to  _ her _ ?

But the Pearl is not shattered. They both continue to exist, and for a long time it seems that Lapis has been forgotten. Randomly, the inside-Pearl might look at her as she browses her Homeworld artefacts, but never tries to interact. Twice she takes Lapis out of her designated spot and passes her to the outside-Pearl, who inspects her, notes that the crack has not worsened, attempts to coax some use out of the mirror, then sighs in defeat and returns her to her rightful spot inside the gem.

This existence is even more boring than life on the warp pad with only the marine life for company.

And then one day, everything dissolves.

The Pearl is struck senseless in the middle of her mindless routines. “No,” the Pearl moans. “No no no. What does this mean? She can’t… what is she thinking?! She can’t have a baby!”

Chaos erupts. The Pearl stops functioning properly. All she can do is sob uncontrollably while the artefacts become jumbled. Something terrible has happened, something about a gem and a ‘baby’ and Rose Quartz herself. Lapis doesn’t understand all the details.

But she delights in the loss of control.

_ Suffer _ , she thinks silently at the Pearl.  _ Suffer like you are making me suffer, trapped in here for all eternity. Hurt like me. _

The Pearl can’t hear her, but she suffers. She hurts. Lapis soaks it all in.

Time passes infinitely. There is no sunshine and moonlight inside the Pearl, so Lapis has no idea how long it takes. The Pearl tries to do her work, but she is haphazard at best. Clumsy, half-hearted. She is lost to her own sour mumblings. “Steven, Steven, Steven,” she repeats like a mantra or a curse. “Oh  _ Rose _ . Please come back.”

An eon passes. Pearl trudges through the artefacts now thrown wildly all over the place. She digs through the Homeworld things, which have tumbled into a pile. Lapis lies under a replicator wand and a broken spear. Pearl’s hand reaches for her and pulls her out from under them.

Pearl studies her face in the mirror. Lapis gazes intently back. The vindication of her pain flees Lapis, and she feels only pity. The Pearl is so broken it’s a wonder she hasn’t shattered right where she stands.

“This won’t do,” the Pearl tells her reflection mournfully.

Another Pearl comes out of the background to join the first. This one is no teary-eyed mess, but calm and gentle. Gone even is the smug flounce from before. Instead, she radiates steeliness, resolve. “No, it won’t,” she tells the first Pearl, who looks at her with relief and gratitude. There is a warmth in the new Pearl’s voice that was not there before. A kind of love and patience that Lapis doesn’t understand, but it is fascinating. “It’s time.”

She extends her hand to the older Pearl, who takes it and disappears in a flash of light, gone inside the new Pearl’s pearl.

The new Pearl picks up Lapis’ mirror and hangs her on thin air. “Time to get everything back in its place.”

###

Routine returns. The new Pearl is fastidious, collected. She moves with a purpose that the old Pearl seemed to lack.

The artefacts return to their old spots. There is some rearranging. A new collection begins to appear.

T-shirts, bottles, pictures, random pieces of what look like trash to Lapis. The new collection is called Steven. Pearl delights in each new piece she hangs up. She sometimes will take an old one down and caress it. Occasionally she sighs in exasperation even as a fond smile plays across her lips.

“I swear he will befriend every creature he meets,” she groans more than once.

Once, twice, everything inside the Pearl comes to a standstill, and a new Pearl appears - except it’s not new like the new Pearl was but is in fact, Lapis realises, the outside-Pearl. Regenerating. She was poofed and needs time to rebuild herself. Inside-Pearl fusses around her but never tries to hurry her along. Eventually outside-Pearl disappears in a sheen of light and existence returns to normal.

Until the day comes.

Lapis doesn’t understand at first. The inside-Pearl perks up with excitement. “Of course, he knows nothing about Gem history!” she says. “I must teach him as much as I can. Oh, I hope it works after all this time.”

And she calls up Lapis’ orderly row of artefacts and pulls her down.

And passes her outside.

Outside!

After so many years inside the Pearl’s head, real life seems oddly vibrant and crowded and constantly in movement. Lapis finds herself facing the true Pearl and a small, oddly-shaped… human? Gem? He doesn’t look like a Gem… But if he is with the Crystal Gems, what else could he be?

Outside-Pearl hasn’t lost all of her smugness, Lapis notes dryly, as the Pearl tries to command Lapis to show them the place of so many milenia of torture. The human watches with wide-eyed wonder, but Lapis refuses to give them anything. The Pearl tries again until frustration sets in.

_ Broken _ , she labels the mirror, and gives it to the round human-Gem, who is overly delighted about something and keeps swinging Lapis around until she’s almost dizzy.  _ Steven _ , she labels him, and Lapis’ mind swoops.

This human-Gem is what Pearl has dedicated an entire corner of her mind to?

She has no plan, but what was it the Pearl said? He will befriend any creature?

Even, perhaps, a mirror with a personality?

She can’t dare to hope, but...

This is it…

The day…

_ Freedom _ .

**Author's Note:**

> I love Lapis; she deserves happiness. I can't wait for her reformation and see what her new outfit looks like.


End file.
